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Te Matuku Bay
Te Matuku Bay, for generations an important site to Maori for gathering food, became the site of the first European settlement on Waiheke. Visible evidence of the early Pakeha families on the island can be found at the Waiheke Pioneer Cemetery, a graveyard to which coffins were brought by water.
The bay is considered special as one of the few examples in northern New Zealand of an uninterrupted sequence of pristine ecosystems from podocarp forest, through the coastal evironment to the estuarine communties of life and out into the deeper water of the Tamaki Strait.
After many years of planning the Te Matuku Marine Reserve was created in August 2005, protecting the bay and part of the Waiheke Channel, out beyond Passage Rock.